


always yours

by kiden



Series: still care about mixtapes [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Confessions, During the five year gap, Let's Talk About It Boys, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 22:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20443424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiden/pseuds/kiden
Summary: Steve’s got Natasha holding him by one arm, and Bruce has the other, and they all but push him into Tony’s little lakeside house.  He wants to go home, to the compound, to his dark little room and his pile of sketchbooks and half-empty mugs of too strong coffee and Tony’s heart that he keeps on his nightstand. It still glows, and at night it casts a damning blue light around his bedroom. Some nights Steve lies awake terrified of the day it burns out.





	always yours

**Author's Note:**

> lets get our hands a little dirty  
also follow me on tumblr @newokiden <3

01 

It’s a beautiful day when Pepper and Tony christen Morgan. A light shower had passed through around seven, but by the time they arrive at the Church the sun is big and bright and the sky a soft, pale blue. Natasha shifts at Steve’s side, crosses her legs and folds her hands on her lap, and next to her Bruce is curled over a pew bible. He hums with disapproving thoughtfulness every once in a while. 

The invitation was surprising for many reasons. That they were having a christening at all - “Pepper,” Natasha had said, turning over the white cardstock, embossed with gold lettering, “she’s a traditionalist at heart.” That Steve’s name was on the invitation, and not written hastily on the card at the last minute. His name was there, in that same rich gold, cordially inviting him. And that his first instinct, as shameful as it felt, was to toss it in the trash. 

But Natasha looked up at him, back straight and eyes sharp, and said,  _ You’re going.  _ There’d been no arguing with that. Once she said it, Steve had thought it was obvious. Of course he’d go. If Tony and Pepper wanted him to be there, he’d go. 

Now he can’t help thinking they’d just been trying to be polite. 

From the altar, Tony only looks at him for a moment. Just long enough to notice he’s there. He doesn’t look at him again. 

02

Steve’s got Natasha holding him by one arm, and Bruce has the other, and they all but push him into Tony’s little lakeside house. He wants to go home, to the compound, to his dark little room and his pile of sketchbooks and half-empty mugs of too strong coffee and Tony’s  _ heart  _ that he keeps on his nightstand. It still glows, and at night it casts a damning blue light around his bedroom. Some nights Steve lies awake terrified of the day it burns out. 

“I’m going to say hello to Pepper,” Nat says. Bruce is already making his way over to Tony, and the little pink and green bundled baby in his arms. “Are you going to be okay?” 

Sometimes she treats him like he’s made of glass, and Steve hates her a little because she’s right. His skin feels tight and too thin, and underneath it is a bottomless icy ocean. If Tony takes one step towards him it will begin to crack. 

“Sure,” he says. “You know me.” 

“That’s what worries me,” she says, but leaves anyway. 

_ God help me,  _ he prays, as the warmth and love of Tony’s new life washes over him,  _ help me let it go.  _

Steve’s been saying that same prayer for over a year and it hasn’t come to pass yet. It’s unlikely today will be the day. Not here. Not with Tony so close. With all of this closing in on him. 

From across the living room, Tony catches his eye. He looks at him a little longer this time. 

_ No trust.  _

_ Liar. _

03

It’s Pepper he talks to first. After they’ve eaten lunch and the people who wished to say a few words have given their speeches. It’s Pepper who approaches the corner Steve picked for himself, cradling her daughter in her arms. 

She says, “Morgan,” as if Steve doesn’t know. As if he doesn’t repeat her name to himself, over and over again,  _ Morgan Morgan Morgan,  _ this brand new life that Tony and Pepper have made. A sunshining hope in the middle of all the dark. 

Pepper says, “Do you want to hold her?” but doesn’t give him the chance to say no. 

She’s heavier than he expected. Bigger than she looked from across the room. Steve parts the blankets with one shaking finger and she reaches up to grab it, and she’s so  _ strong.  _ Morgan has big, brown, curious eyes, and Steve would move mountains with his bare hands for her. Immediately, irreconcilably, he loves her more and differently than he’s ever loved anyone.

“It’s like that,” Pepper says gently. “It took him by surprise too. Your entire world realigns. She looks like him.” 

That’s the way Pepper handles everything. With grace. With kindness. She’s always treated him like a friend, even when he might not have deserved it. When she had every right to hate him. When Tony was lost out there in space, starving and dying and trying to hold on tight to the last threads of life inside him, there were times when they stayed up all night, holding each other’s hand in silence. A feeling inside them between mourning and hope. 

She knew then, just as she knows now, how Steve feels. Pepper has never punished him for it. She’s more qualified than anyone else to understand. 

Pepper understands Steve is in love with Tony. She knows why. 

Maybe she’d understand the way he hates him, too. 

04

For years, when they were on the run, Steve went over it every night in his head. What he could have done differently. The choices he could’ve made instead. He did it even though there was no use to it. He’d wonder if Tony destroyed the burner phone he sent, and it would turn his blood cold, but he knew somehow he still had it. That belief chased away some of the chill. 

There’s no chill inside him at all when Tony grabs his wrist and drags him down a staircase into the den, which is more of a makeshift lab. The thin ice of Steve’s skin cracks, just like he knew it would, and it spreads up his arm and across his chest. This, he thinks, is why he came. For Tony to break him open. 

Tony says, “You know, honestly, I didn’t think you’d show up. But you’re always full of surprises.” 

And Steve says, “I thought I was protecting you.” 

It’s not a lie. Tony will never believe it, but  _ it’s not a lie.  _ Some lies are how you love someone. You throw your body over them and take the bullet, the full blast of a grenade, the painful, life-shattering reverberation of the truth. You lie so they can keep going. And you bear the weight of the consequences. 

“Bullshit,” Tony says. His hand is pressed right over his heart. “You were protecting him.” 

“I was protecting  _ both of you,”  _ Steve says, his jaw clenched so tightly it aches down the sides of his neck. “And it was selfish, yes. It was. I’m not proud of it.”

“But you’d do it again,” Tony spits. It’s an accusation. 

“You’re damn right I would.” 

Tony is still for a moment and then his anger explodes out of him. The chair he flips crashes at Steve’s feet. The sound he makes is all spit and fury and, underneath it somewhere, heartbreak. Steve lets himself pretend, just for a moment, it’s an echo of his own. 

“You tried to kill me.” 

He expected Tony to break him, but not like this. 

“What?” 

“You tried to kill me,” Tony says again, and he’s in Steve’s face this time. Pressed so close their chests are almost touching. His eyes are big and there’s fire in them and the heat coming off his body could scorch the earth. “You dug your shield into my chest.” 

Steve wants to match his anger. To be furious. To rant against him the way Tony had a year ago at the compound. But it’s not in him. There’s nothing left of him, most days. Especially now. 

Under the hand he places on Tony’s chest, Steve and feel his heart beating. In the silence he can hear it. It’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. 

“No, Tony,” he says softly, with as much of a voice as he can find. “I’d never - I had to  _ stop  _ you.”

“For him,” Tony takes a step back, but not far enough so that Steve isn’t touching him.

“ _ For the both of you.”  _

“You’re so full of it,” Tony snaps. The next step he takes drops Steve’s hand off his chest. “The wild part is, I think you actually believe it. You actually believe you were doing the right thing. As always. I told the - the kid. _ He thinks he’s right. That makes him dangerous.  _ That’s still you all over.”

This is it. Maybe his last chance. Maybe the last time he’ll be alone in a room with Tony, and Steve can’t let the distance between them stand. Can’t leave, or let Tony leave, until he lets everything that’s been boiling throughout the years bubble over. Tear the house down, he thinks, at least then he could start rebuilding. 

Upstairs someone laughs. Happy, maybe. He can hear Pepper’s heels cross the floor above them. 

“Tell me you weren’t thankful I stopped you,” Steve says, and raises himself up to his full height. Tony opens his mouth but doesn’t say anything. “Was I supposed to let you  _ kill  _ him? Kill me to get to him? I wasn’t trying to kill you, Tony. I had to depower the goddamn suit before you did something you’d regret.”

He doesn’t deny it, and a spark of hope, or something close to it, bursts to life between them. Tony’s too smart to think it was  _ Bucky,  _ and not Hydra who killed his parents. He’s smart enough to know if he wants to keep being angry, to keep hating Steve, they shouldn’t be having this conversation. But they are anyway. That has to mean something. 

“You left me there,” he says. His voice is still sharp with anger, but it’s duller than it was. It’s peeling away to fragile underneath all that armor. “To die.” 

Steve wants to touch him. Wants to take Tony’s face in his hands and pull him close enough that he could feel his own heart beating. To feel the way it races when he’s near. 

“Do you honestly believe I think so little of you?” Steve says, and his own voice is more raw than he’d like. “You have five suits orbiting the planet at any given moment. You’re the smartest, most resourceful man I’ve ever known. I would never have -.” 

Just say what it is, Steve tells himself. Just name it. There’s no more damage it can do that hasn’t already been done. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says and it comes out of him in a slow rush. Echos like he’s in a confession booth. “I’m sorry I broke my promise to you. That we weren’t in that fight together.”

Steve laughs. It’s an unhappy, hollow sound. 

“I thought - I know this isn’t about Bucky. And it’s not even about Siberia. You think I abandoned you, and maybe I did. We were -” the breath he takes is shallow, and shakes something awful loose in his chest, “we were never honest with each other. Both stubborn. Both thick headed. Even now you think you were right about your armor around the world. Even now, after everything, I’d do anything to stop you.” 

Tony turns away from him, braces his hand on the nearby desk, and Steve watches the ragged way his shoulders rise and fall. 

“When I withheld the truth about your parents, maybe I was doing the same thing. Trying to fight a war before it starts. I wanted to spare you - and myself - that pain. But then the worst happened, anyway.”

The silence between them is long enough for Tony to turn back towards him, his face red and eyes hooded. And Steve’s stomach turns violently, bile rising to the back of his throat. If this is the end, he can accept that. Maybe he’ll never learn how to live with it, but he can close this door behind him. Try to make something for himself out of whatever is left. 

“What’s your definition of the worst?” Tony asks. Each word sounds painful to get out.

Steve closes his eyes and shakes his head. Feels smaller than he has in years. 

“All of this. Everything that’s happened. I know, in my heart, this wouldn’t have happened if we’d faced Thanos together. This is the worst that could have happened. We lost each other and  _ everyone  _ paid for it.”

Something changes on Tony’s face. It goes soft and open and, like he’s reading off a script - one he’s written, and rewritten, and rehearsed to perfection, he says, “It kills me. It kills me that I’m never as good as I am when I’m standing next to you. And I  _ hate  _ you. Every decision I made in those years, I’d think,  _ what would Steve say.  _ What would you think about this. Would you try to talk me out of it? Would you support it? And you didn’t deserve that faith anymore. I just couldn’t take it away.” 

Name the thing, Steve tells himself again. Because there’s nothing left to lose.

“I loved you, Tony,” Steve says. He does exactly what he wants to do - takes Tony’s face between his hands and holds him, brings him closer. “I loved you and I admired you all that time. All this time. Even when we fought. And I’m sorry for not making sure you knew that. It might have saved us a lot of pain.” 

Tony goes boneless against him, and laughs so brokenly, so completely devastated, Steve knows he could live a dozen more lives and never find a way to put him back together.

“That ship has sailed.” 

“I’m not asking you for anything,” Steve says. “I want you to know because you deserve to know, for good or bad.”

“We just can never stop hurting each other,” Tony breathes, and kisses him. 

It’s a goodbye. 

05

Four years is a long time after the world has ended. 

It’s been two months since Tony showed up at the compound and it’s three days before the mission. It’s not enough time. That’s what the press called him: A Man Out of Time. And it’s always been true, in various ways. 

Tony is walking around the perimeter of Steve’s room, fiddling with picture frames and his alarm clock and the tiny gifts children have sent him over the years. School art projects. Figurines of his shield. On the wall is a drawing of him and Tony - of Captain America and Iron Man - and there are yellow stars and pink hearts around their heads. 

He only stops when he gets to the nightstand. His fingers ghosting over the shell of his RT node. It still glows, from time to time. Tonight is one of them. 

It’s been four years, but Steve can still feel the lingering heat of Tony’s mouth pressed against his. 

“It wasn’t very subtle, was it?” 

Steve is sitting at the edge of his bed. Tony is close enough to touch, if only he’d reach out. He doesn’t.

“In front of everyone, too,” Steve says easily. “No, it wasn’t subtle.” 

“I can be dramatic, Rogers. Maybe you never noticed. Your brain  _ is  _ over a hundred years old.” 

Steve wants Tony to kiss him again. Wants to wrap their arms around each other. He wants Tony to push him backwards, to take him to bed. Wants to use the time machine he invented to go back to when they first met and to do it right, from the beginning. There are so many things Steve wants that he can never have. 

“You kept it,” Tony whispers. The sun is setting, casting him in gold against the red of his t-shirt. Even without the armor he’s the strongest person Steve has ever met. “Makes sense. It was always yours.”


End file.
